La Bourdonnais anchored at Pondicherry on the 9th July, and began at once to prepare for attacks on our settlements. The history of his quarrels with Dupleix, the governor-general, does not concern the naval operations, since they did not prevent him for carrying out his attack on Madras. He was at sea again on the 4th August to look for Peyton, and met the English commander coming back from Ceylon. From the 8th to the 11th August the two squadrons were in sight of one another, but so convinced was Peyton of the inferiority of his squadron that he not only avoided action but sailed away to Bengal. La Bourdonnais now returned to Pondicherry, picked up soldiers, and sailed for Madras on the 15th August. The action of Peyton was again unpardonable, for even if he felt too weak to engage the French at sea, he could have contributed men and guns to the defence of Madras. The help his mere presence on the coast would have afforded is proved by the fact that when in the middle of the siege La Bourdonnais received a false report of the appearance of large English ships, he was preparing to re-embark his men. But the French commander was not one of those who are to be drawn off by mere rumours. He waited for confirmation, and when it did not come, he pushed the siege, and the place surrendered on the 29th September. This event and its consequences, the breach of the capitulation made by La Bourdonnais and the seizure of the town by Dupleix, were the beginning of the great fight between the two companies. At the change of the monsoon in October, which suspended naval operations for sailing ships, La Bourdonnais returned to his own government in the islands, and appeared no more in those seas. He was compelled to return home, was accused of corruption by his opponents of the company, and died ruined and broken-hearted. Once more our best help came from our enemy.
In the following year, 1747, Peyton was superseded by Rear-Admiral Griffin, who is accused of treating his predecessor with great brutality. It is very possible, for Griffin was one of the bad officers who then infested our navy, insolently tyrannical to his subordinates, and shy before the enemy. His own conduct was no better than Peyton’s, for he allowed M. de Bouvet, with a much inferior squadron from Mauritius, to revictual the French garrison of Madras, and did nothing against him either coming or going.
Now, however, the East Indies began to profit by the revival of energy and intelligence at the Admiralty. A squadron of ten ships, of which six were of the line, was sent out at the end of 1747 under the command of Edward Boscawen, one of the new race of officers who were being brought forward by Anson and Bedford. Boscawen owed much to family influence, for he was a brother of the Viscount Falmouth, who once cowed a recalcitrant secretary of state by significantly saying, “Remember, sir, we are seven,” that being the number of pocket boroughs owned by the Boscawen family. But the admiral was a man of ability, who would have won promotion at any time when it was to be won by merit. He sailed in November, but did not reach Fort St. Davids, which since the loss of Madras had become the Company’s chief station on the Coromandel coast, till the 29th July 1748. The length of the voyage was due partly to delay at the Cape to recruit the health of the crews and partly to an unsuccessful attempt to land at Mauritius. The force collected under Boscawen was the greatest seen as yet in eastern waters, for it consisted of ten English line-of-battle ships, and five smaller vessels, together with armed vessels belonging to our own Company and the Dutch. The French had nothing to oppose to this armament on the sea, and as the admiral had brought 1500 soldiers with him, it would seem that it ought to have been easy to sweep the French from the coast of Coromandel altogether. But the military forces were of inferior quality, consisting of independent companies raised for the service of the Company, and had as yet no military spirit. The scientific branches, and in particular the engineers who were of the first importance for siege work, were very poor. The siege of Pondicherry, undertaken in revenge for the capture of Madras, was badly managed, and turned out a complete failure. Boscawen, who directed the operations on shore, was no general, and was badly served by his engineers. A bombardment by the fleet took place on the 26th September, but it was little better than a farce, for the shallow water made it impossible for our ships to approach near enough for their fire to be effective. At a later period in the fighting in the Carnatic the Company’s soldiers found that they were being fired at with the cannon balls then wasted on Pondicherry. After lasting from the 8th August to the 30th September, after not a few panics among the raw soldiers of the army and the sailors landed to work the guns, the siege was raised with a loss of 1065 Europeans.
Peace had now been made in Europe, and Madras was restored in return for Louisbourg. The war indeed was only beginning between the Companies, but henceforward it was carried on ashore, and in the name of the native princes. Boscawen returned in the following year.
CHAPTER V
THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR TILL 1758
Authorities.—See Chapter IV.; Mr. J. Corbett, Seven Years’ War; Barrow, Anson and Howe.
It may appear that I have given undue prominence to the corruption and bad spirit of the navy in these years. But the insistence has been deliberate, for the great work which had to be done from 1744 onwards, for a generation, was to raise the standard of conduct expected from officers, not only by public opinion working from without, but by their own code of honour working within the ranks of the service. This would only be effected by bringing forward new men. If rules and regulations could have saved the navy from discredit and mismanagement, it had all it needed in the code of the Duke of York. The evil lay not in the laws but the men. Till they were better there was no real hope of reform. That one was wanted was beyond all question. In 1749 Sandwich, now First Lord, acting perhaps at the instigation, and certainly with the hearty approval, of Anson, made an Admiralty visitation of the dockyards. It was the first ever held by the Lords of the Admiralty or even by the administrative officers of the Navy Board. According to Sir John Barrow, who condensed the report in his life of Anson, they, i.e. the Lords of the Admiralty, “found the men generally idle, the officers ignorant, the stores ill-arranged, abuses of all kinds overlooked, the timber ill-assorted, that which was longest in store being undermost, the Standing Orders neglected, the ships in ordinary in a very dirty and bad condition, filled with women and children, and that the officers of the yard had not visited them, which it was their duty to do; that men were found borne and paid as officers who had never done duty as such, for which their Lordships reprimanded the Navy Board through the comptroller; that the store-keepers’ accounts were many years in arrear, and, what was most extraordinary, that the Navy Board had never required them;—in short, gross negligence, irregularities, waste, and embezzlement were so palpable, that their Lordships ordered an advertisement to be set in the various parts of the yards, offering encouragement and protection to such as should discover any misdemeanours, committed either by the officers or workmen, particularly in employing workmen or labourers, on their private affairs, or in any other abuse whatever.”
The abuses noted, and for a time amended by the Commission of James I. and by James II., had sprung up again to their old height under the favour of negligence and self-seeking at headquarters. It was idle to hope to deal with these evils by sporadic visitations and encouragement to the common informer. What was wanted was constant watching, and it was long before this was supplied. Lord Sandwich’s visitation was not repeated, and it was not till 1770 that Sir Edward Hawke ordered one to be held every two years. Even this measure proved of little effect, and the first years of the nineteenth century were reached before the old element of slovenly corruption had become intolerable and Lord St. Vincent was able to begin a thorough reform.